


Passing the Torch

by Isis



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Grumpy Mentors, Harrowhark is also wee and is in it briefly, Mentors, Pre-Canon, Wee Moppet Gideon Nav
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25560643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: "[C]ertainly Aiglamene did not love her and would have laughed herself to her overdue death at the idea:  but in her had been a measure of tolerance, a willingness to loosen the leash and see what Gideon could do with free rein." -Gideon the Ninth, chapter 1
Relationships: Aiglamene & Gideon Nav
Comments: 25
Kudos: 77
Collections: Every Woman 2020





	Passing the Torch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inquisitor_tohru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inquisitor_tohru/gifts).



The shuttle disgorged Aiglamene onto the sterile dirt of the Ninth’s landing-field. To her surprise the Reverend Mother and Reverend Father were both there to greet her. Crux, whose presence was the only one she had expected, saluted stiffly. “Our hero returns from the front,” proclaimed Crux in his scratchy voice. “All hail the flower of the military might of the Ninth House, Keepers of the Locked Tomb, steadfast in devotion and in sacrifice.”

“Well done,” said Lord Noniusvianus politely. Aiglamene got the feeling that he was slightly disappointed in her returning alive, rather than as useful bones. But really, it was rare enough that soldiers returned at all. Either you were killed on the battlefield and your bones and flesh and thanergy became weapons for the adepts of the Cohort, or you survived and kept fighting. 

She saluted Crux, bowed to the Lord and Lady of Drearburh, and hobbled toward the shaft.

“Oh, dear,” said Lady Novenarius. “Perhaps something can be done about the...leg.”

“If anyone can do something about the leg, my lady, it will be you. Or my lord, of course.” The Cohort necromancers had their varied disciplines, but the best bone-adepts were of the Ninth. Still, Aiglamene doubted that after all this time – it had taken months for her flesh to knit well enough to risk the voyage home – anything could be done. The adepts pressed into healing service were typically not the cream of the Cohort, since after all, their skills were rarely called for. They had not bothered to give her a new eye or reshape her scarred, battered face. The leg had only been indifferently repaired to bare functionality.

“I’m sure we can make some improvements.” She looked at her husband briefly, then returned her gaze to Aiglamene. She seemed to be waiting for something.

Oh. She had been remiss. “And I congratulate you both on the birth of your daughter. Our prayers have been answered. May she thrive for the glory of the Ninth.”

The Reverend Mother inclined her head slightly, a small, tight smile on her lips. “She will be the greatest necromancer of her age.”

Of course Aiglamene had read the dispatches. The news from home on the official channels, nearly a year before, had said only that the Ninth House had been blessed with an heir, and the future of the Ninth secured. The terrible cost of that heir she had learned through a private transmission intended for her alone, the same way she had learned of the dead woman and live infant who had dropped mysteriously into the Ninth. On the subject of the latter, she had made discreet inquiries but learned nothing. On the subject of the former, she was as silent as the Locked Tomb. The Ninth had her allegiance and her devotion; it was an awful, ruined place, but it was _her_ place, and she would not betray it.

* * *

The corridors of the Ninth had always been empty, echoing places, full of decay, devoid of life. They had been this way when Aiglamene had left to fight for the Necrolord Prime, and she suspected that they had been this way since long before she was born. But they seemed emptier now, as she made her uncomfortable way toward her cell, with the knowledge of the generation sacrificed and gone. 

The emptiness gained depth when she went to prayer. She took her place in the transept, surrounded by skeletons and nuns made up to look like skeletons. The Reverend Mother held her baby in her arms, though there was something in her posture that reminded Aiglamene of a soldier cradling her weapon. Mortus, as Cavalier Primary, sat straight-backed behind the Reverend Father, and next to him was a large lumpy youth who, Aiglamene realized with some surprise, was his son. When she’d gone to battle, he had been a scrawny child, but he was scrawny no longer. A pity that the added bulk looked more like fat than like muscle. 

And that was the next generation. The infant Reverend Daughter and the hulking teen who would be her cavalier.

A clatter interrupted her reverie, followed by a hissed, “Gideon!” from one of the nuns. Aiglamene looked in the direction of the disturbance. A tiny nunlet in smeared face-paint was running toward her, black robes lifted in chubby fists. Aiglamene held out a hand to keep the child from running into her bad leg. She had forgotten; that was not _quite_ the entire next generation. This must be the baby who had fallen from the sky down the shaft of the Ninth.

Into the cold silence of the Ninth’s disapproval, the child – Gideon – triumphantly exclaimed, “You _ugly_!”

“You’re no beauty yourself,” said Aiglamene. The child’s skull-painted jaw dropped. Aiglamene patted the bench beside her. “Now sit down and be quiet.”

After the service, Sister Dolorimorta hustled up to them – as much as an ancient crone could hustle, anyway – and took charge of Gideon. “She’s never been so well-behaved during prayer! Thank you so much.”

Aiglamene watched them go, Sister Dolorimorta scolding young Gideon, who was, as far as she could tell, ignoring the nun completely. But if the only use Aiglamene could be now to the Ninth was as an object for this child to stare at, well, that was what she would be.

* * *

As it turned out, that was not her only use, or so her lord and lady claimed. They made her Captain of the Guard, though she wasn’t sure whether that was in appreciation of her abilities or as a subtle dig at her condition. Because of course, there was no guard to be captain of, not in the Ninth. The soldiers and military monks had all gone to the front. She was the captain, and she was the guard. 

But Aiglamene was not easily daunted. She rose before the first bell and did her exercises, slowly and painfully at first, with muscles atrophied and unused to the stress, but it all came back to her in time. Twenty push-ups, twenty pull-ups, twenty awkward squats; then fifty, then a hundred, then three sets of a hundred. In front of the mirror she practiced her moves with the sword, the positions, the strikes, the slices, the parries. Over and over again, until she no longer felt a decrepit hulk. Her body remembered. 

Sometimes she saw a painted face, briefly, in the doorway she left open for the little air it provided. A flash of reddish stubble on a tiny head. She ignored it. There was only the sword.

* * *

“No,” said Aiglamene, for what felt to her like the hundredth time. “The buckler’s your defense, not your weapon. Stop trying to bash me with it.”

“But I _am_ using it as defense,” Ortus complained. “It’s just that you’re too fast.”

“No, it’s just that you’re too slow.”

“Father doesn’t think I’m too slow.”

“You should have ended that sentence after ‘think.’ Again.” She raised her sword toward the unfortunate cavalier-in-training, and just as before, he parried with his own and then pushed his buckler toward her. This time she kicked it from his hand, then slipped her rapier beneath his blade and brought it to his jugular. “You’re not listening to me.”

Ortus backed away. “I don’t have to listen to you. Father teaches me well enough.”

“Obviously not.”

“You can’t talk about him like that! He’s Mortus the Ninth!” The boy’s face was beginning to redden. “He’s the Cavalier! He’s worth more than a broken-down old wreck like you, even if they call you Captain. _You’re_ not captain of anything. You’re just a washed-up Cohort soldier!”

Sliding forward on her good leg, she brought her sword down fast, knocking his sword from his hand, then slashed it sideways against the hand that held the buckler so that he gasped and released it. 

“You _cut_ me! I’m _bleeding_!”

“Get your daddy to kiss it better,” she said. “Somewhere that isn’t my training room.”

He snatched up his sword and buckler and left the room, muttering dark threats that Aiglamene knew would amount to nothing. After a moment she turned to the cabinet that sat at one side of the room, its door slightly ajar. “You can come out now.”

Gideon crawled out of the cabinet and got to her feet. She was not quite four. A few months back, Aiglamene had heard a noise as she was laying out the equipment for that day’s training, and there was Gideon, bare-faced, scrunched down in the cabinet that held cleaning supplies. She had been about to haul the child out and push her out the door when Sister Destimorta craned her gray-and-black face in from the hallway.

“Pardon, Captain, but have you seen Gideon? She’s run off from her instructions.”

Aiglamene glanced at the cabinet. The little head shook violently. Well, _she_ wouldn’t want to be a black vestal, either. “Sorry, no. Have you tried the store-rooms? Lots of places to hide there.”

After that, Gideon had often sat curled in the cabinet watching what went on in the training room, whether it was Aiglamene practicing alone, or sparring with Crux or Mortus, or attempting to teach the hopeless Ortus. Now she looked up at Aiglamene and said, “What’s a washy cortsojer?”

She sighed, sat down, patted the floor next to her. “Let me tell you about the Cohort...”

* * *

Aiglamene was not surprised when Crux came to tell her that Gideon had gone missing again. By her count, the child had attempted to run away six times, and she was only eight years old. “The nuns say you’ve been filling Nav’s head with stories,” Crux told her gravely. “You will not enable her to escape her debt to the Ninth.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. But really, Crux, you can’t think she’s fit for the altar or the oss. Even I can tell she’s a terrible nun.”

“She will abide in her duty to the Ninth.”

“We all do. But perhaps her duty lies with the sword, rather than with bead and bone?”

Just then, one of the nuns came to the door. “We’ve found her. Please, both of you, come with me.”

Crux snorted, and stomped after the nun. Aiglamene went to the wardrobe to retrieve her sword. 

It wasn’t there.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she muttered, opening the drawer below and taking out her second-best sword. She followed the two of them out to the shaft and up to the landing-field. The nun was explaining to Crux that the girl had been found hiding in one of the crates of snow leeks that were stacked on the field waiting for the shuttle that would carry them up and away from the Ninth. When they got there, Gideon had her back to the crate and yes, Aiglamene’s sword in her hands, which she was using to whack gracelessly at the skeletons that advanced on her. A scattering of bone fragments on the ground suggested she’d been at it for a while.

“Put it down, Nav!” thundered Crux.

“I’m leaving, and you can’t stop me!” Glaring at him, Gideon held the sword out in front of her. It was nearly as long as she was tall, and the tip wavered as her small muscles strained, and her stance was pathetic, but at least her hands were in the right places. 

“I can, though,” came a gleeful voice from behind Aiglamene. It was Lady Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the Reverend Daughter, a tiny thing made of sharp bones, a sharper tongue, and far more necromancy than was reasonable for a seven-year-old. She waved her hand, and the bits of bone on the ground rose and threw themselves at Gideon, growing into shackles that pinned her to the crate and knocked the sword from her grip. (Aiglamene winced as it hit the ground, doubtless ruining the edge.) “Got you, Griddle!” crowed the Reverend Daughter. “You stupid knucklebone!”

“You are a disgrace to the Ninth,” Crux intoned. “We feed you and clothe you, and yet you shun your duties!”

“Perhaps,” said Aiglamene, “she’d not shun her duties if they were more suited to her interests. And her skills.”

“You would _instruct_ her?” Crux sounded as appalled as if she’d offered to teach him to dance.

She shrugged. “Being Captain of the Nonexistent Guard is rather dull. Ortus trains with his father these days. It would give us both something to do.”

The Lady of Drearburh, when petitioned on the issue, allowed as how the child was sadly deficient as a nun, and considering the advanced age of both Crux and Aiglamene (the latter glowered at that but kept silent) it was reasonable to begin the process of training a replacement, to uphold the military honor of the Ninth when they were both laid to rest in the catacombs.

The next day, Gideon came to the training room with undisguised delight that was only slightly dimmed when Aiglamene handed her a heavy, dull training sword. She hefted it in both hands, made a face. “Yours is much nicer.”

“And you are not to touch it again, or it’s back to black robes and face-paint for you. Now, hold it up – not like that, it’s a sword, not a lead pipe – and mirror my moves.”

At the end of the session, Gideon was so wrecked with fatigue that when Aiglamene swatted the sword from her hands, she could barely pick it up from the ground again. But she was grinning as she left, and after she was out of sight, Aiglamene allowed herself a small, satisfied smile as well. This was what Gideon was born to do, and despite her strange and unknown heritage, her mouthiness, her refusal to take anything at all seriously – Aiglamene was going to turn her into a soldier.

* * *

And after all that – after the years of training on the two-hander, and months of training with the rapier – Aiglamene stood among the nuns and pilgrims of Drearburh and watched her prize pupil – her only pupil – mount the boarding ramp behind the Lady of the Ninth House. Amid the rattle of prayer bones, she held her arm in the salute that was the only farewell she could offer. Gideon must have seen her from the corner of an eye, for she turned and gave her a salute in return, so snappy and over-perfect that Aiglamene almost laughed out loud.

_Don’t come back, Gideon. Serve your lady, join the Cohort, steal a ship and explore the galaxy if you like, but never, ever, ever come back to this rotted tomb of a planet._

The Reverend Daughter and her Cavalier Primary disappeared through the doorway. The ramp retracted, the door slid down with finality. With a clank and a rumble, the shuttle lifted off.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Opalmatrix for a helpful last-minute beta read!


End file.
